SCHOOL REFORMS PROPOSED

Public education in Broward County, attacked by critics at home and in Tallahassee, would undergo dramatic changes in the next two years under proposed reforms unveiled Thursday to the School Board.

The new vision uses scores on stringent statewide tests, not locally awarded grades, as the yardstick -- a move that would likely result in thousands more students being held back a grade.

Those children would be forced for the first time to attend what were once voluntary summer school classes. Others with better scores, who were previously eligible, would not be able to enroll.

During the regular school year, faltering students would attend class an extra hour. The 180-day school year, established two centuries ago based on the needs of the harvest, would be extended for many, perhaps all students.

Bloated classes for struggling students would finally shrink.

Teachers would be offered incentives to teach in low-performing schools.

School district staff handed over these and dozens of other proposals to the board, which will begin months of discussion at a 10 a.m. retreat Tuesday at Crystal Lake Middle School, 3551 NE Third Ave., Pompano Beach.

The staffers' Educational Issues Plan offers School Board members a broad range of policy decisions with a variety of multimillion-dollar price tags -- most of which may require a "robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul" prioritizing of projects.

Some decisions must be made in the next week or two to take effect this spring. Others must be made later this year to take effect by August 2001.

But many of the proposals echo concepts championed for years by board members such as Judie Budnick.

Budnick's primary concern Thursday was to ensure that the district focuses help on D and F students regardless of the grade their school has under the state's "A-Plus" grading system.

"We have said we want to transform education one student at a time. But we have to be sure that we're not just doing it one school at a time."

Superintendent Frank Till is pressing hard for the public to take all of it seriously, especially mandatory summer school, as a last-ditch effort to dodge being held back a year.

"Some people think the kids won't come. They think we're bluffing. People need to know that it's not a bluff. If they don't come, they'll be retained," Till said.

Most changes respond to several years of reforms ordered by the state Legislature, education department and the past two governors.

In the past five years, Education Commissioner Frank Brogan and Gov. Lawton Chiles pioneered the Sunshine State Standards, a detailed list of what every child is expected to know in every grade.

Then they created the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, known as FCATs, covering that material, with questions requiring students to explain how they arrived at their answers rather than guess at multiple choices.

Last year, Gov. Jeb Bush and Brogan, now lieutenant governor, mandated in their "A-Plus" education reform program that students' promotions and their teachers' effectiveness be based on the FCATs.

The new Broward County proposal attempts to create mechanisms to comply with Bush's plan and to increase efforts to keep students and their schools off his D and F lists.

The keystones of the proposals are watershed criteria in each grade for deciding whether a student is promoted or held back. The "A-Plus" plan outlaws promoting students for any reason other than they have learned the Sunshine State Standards.

"This criteria for promotion is mastery of the standards, not grades," said Deputy Superintendent Frances Haithcock, whose staff spearheaded the project.

Specifically, students must score a certain grade on statewide tests, usually the FCATs. And if they don't master the lessons, under Broward's proposal, they must attend summer school this year.

Broward officials have prized summer school as an effective way to improve students' learning. For years, any student could attend summer school, and in 1995, more than 82,000 enrolled.

But legislators whittled at funds for almost five years, calling it a glorified baby-sitting service.

So Broward restricted admission to all high school students, to children enrolled in critically low-performing middle and elementary schools, to students with emotional or learning disabilities or limited English proficiency, or to those who had failed a class.

Finally, last summer, the district rearranged funds to re-open enrollment to any student in serious need of academic help. About 60,000 students volunteered.

The new proposal avoids a major increase in the $24 million program by barring students who formerly qualified including gifted students, high school students in no danger of failing and students who are faltering but who are not in the lowest-performing categories.

Another major initiative cuts class sizes, an effort the district has already spent $10 million on and plans to spend another $10 million on in the next 12 months. Smaller class sizes are prized for providing lagging students with the special attention they need.

A menu of options are being offered that would reduce class sizes to an 18-to-1 ratio or a 20-to-1 ratio in all first-grade classes, or only first grades in schools with an D or F grade. Another option would reduce classes for the lowest performing students in seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th grades.

Yet another facet would add an hour to the school day of students in D and F schools, add an undetermined number of days to the school year for those same students, and possibly even extend the school year for all students.

Bill Hirschman can be reached at bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4513.